Bikepacking Trans Germany (BTG): Pt 3

Day 2 Monday.

My alarm sounded at 0530 after a reasonable six hours sleep, I assumed that nobody had passed me in the night or I’d slept through the sound of tires grinding through the gravel only 10m from my tent. 15 minutes later I was on the move again. I’m not a breakfast person so a hand full of nuts while packing up is usually enough to see me through the first hour or two.

Day 2 is usually the toughest day of any trip for me. The euphoria and motivation of day one replaced by sore legs, a poor nights sleep after the first night in a tent again, months of preparation deflated to the actuality of being on the road again, romantic ideas of huge days brought abruptly back to normality. Day 2 of the BTG had non of this, I woke up fresh and motivated and within five minutes of cycling my legs were firing on all cylinders. It seemed that my winter training program had worked and a hint of race adrenaline obviously helped too.

A couple of minutes later I passed Peter f. (DE) packing up at the next hut, I waved and carried on. Though he soon passed me on the next hill, he was looking strong and unstoppable. Even when he turned around half way up the next hill….”shit, I followed him up the wrong track”. An hour later we met again at a bakery in a small village. Anja also magically turned up again. “why aren’t you at CP1 young lady?” She’d ridden until 2am then slept on a local sport field. So, she was faster than me and had ridden a few hours further, yet at breakfast we were at the same bakery and had about the same amount of sleep. This shows the interesting dynamics and strategies of Ultra endurance racing, though looking at the live tracking is very addictive its important to ride your own race, pure speed is only one of many factors in such a long event, time sleeping/resting, time off bike and time faffing around around at supermarkets and food stops are equally as important as actual speed. Anja, Peter, myself and half a dozen others would spend the next week constantly leap frogging each other.

At around 10am I made it to CP1:

The rest of the day is a blur climbing, forrests, supermarkets and bakeries.

I once again took a couple of hours off in the afternoon to avoid the warmest part of the day, this meant I had plenty of energy to ride into the cool night. Night riding is obviously slower than in daylight as you try to avoid potholes and badgers/ deer crossing the track (several near misses with both). As I went to bed the penny dropped that my routine needed tweaking, riding in the dark for 2 hours at night then sleeping the first 2 hours of daylight didn’t make sense. I would try finishing earlier the next day.

I climbed into my tent at midnight and set the alarm for 6 hours laters. I’d planned 6 hours sleep a night for the first five nights then once into the second phase of my plan I’d taper the sleep in the hope of increasing my daily riding time. (plan the ride, ride the plan).

I should have slept like a baby after the 150km and around 4000vm, but….

Day 3 Tuesday.

It had been a restless night, just like every night the last month I couldn’t sleep on my RH side because of bruised ribs from a MTB crash. But every time I rolled over to the left side my left ankle dropped with an agonising shot of pain through my whole body…wtf…I had images of my BTG ending the next morning. I assumed the pain on the outside of my ankle was from the pushing up hill so much the previous day. I could only hope it would heal enough with the six hours rest it would get, it was too early in the race to use pain killers. Better to quit before it got bad than hide the pain with painkillers.

My alarm sounded at 6am, when I looked outside of my tent my only thought was, if only I wasn’t racing this would be a great spot for a long slow breakfast before starting the day. But, I wasn’t touring so a long slow breakfast wasn’t on the menu. As I got out of bed my ankle collapsed in agony…Bugger…I packed up, ate my handful of nuts and hoped that my ankle was a walking injury and not a cycling injury. The good news was it only hurt if walking or doing nothing and I wasn’t planning on walking or doing nothing much that day. BTG was still game on.

Challenging hills and single track started the day and the ride to the next supermarket seemed to take forever.

Two hours in I took the time for a second breakfast of more than just nuts. i.e. nuts and salami. Also taking the time to catch up on internet non-sense and checking out the tracker.

I got a little excited by the fact that a couple of people that had been far ahead of me the previous evening where quite close. Another downside of looking at the tracking page is you sometimes think you’ve almost caught someone only to find that the 10km gap between you is a huge mountain and by the time you get to the top the gap is once again 40km. Or a good supermarket/restaurant is equally deceiving. I arrived in town as Detlev was leaving, Benjamin and Anja had left just before him. But, he’d already been there an hour and I would also be sucked into staying almost an hour by the big breakfast and good coffee…

When I left an hour later Detlev was only 5km ahead of me, I thought “great, he’s sleeping again, maybe I can catch him again”. Sadly the 5km turned out to be a bastard of a climb and by the time I got to the top he was long gone again.

In the coming days Detlev and I would become “supermarket buddies” as I called it. No matter the time of day or location, we’d see each other in each town, he leaving as I arrived or me sneaking past while he ate at a restaurant, again, so much time can be won or lost in supermarkets and restaurants. I totally underestimated this.

Late in the afternoon I past a lake with swimming area. The look on the tourists faces was funny as I rolled up on my bike, jumped into the lake, washed off three days sweat and salt, walking out of the lake, wrung my cloths out then continued riding. It felt great to be sort of clean again.

That evening I arrived in a small town and was 30 minutes too late for the promised petrol station and supermarket. Luckily there was still a snack bar open so I had a disappointing dinner of Doner and chips and managed to drink half a beer. The gentleman thought it strange that I didn’t want salad and sauce in my “Doner box” I was just hoping that all the flies on the salad hadn’t made their way to the meat. After an hour in the fly nest where I’d managed to recharge my mobile, I rode another hour and found a perfect spot to camp in a pine forrest.

I checked the tracker and could rest well, the people ahead were too far ahead for me to dream of catching but seemed to have stopped riding, Tobbe had already stopped, and Morgan was a good 40+ kilometer behind me so no problem. I settled in for the perfect 6 hours sleep, just before dark, meaning I could start at dawn the next day. My new routine making more sense. I had one of the best nights sleep of the trip. Logical after another 130km and 3000vm.